The Symbiosis of Prejudice: A Tripartite Analysis of Responses to Feminicide as a Human Rights Violation in Mexico
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CHARLI MCMACKIN | ACADEMIC SUBMISSION
The Graduate Inequality Review, Volume II (July 2023) |
Abstract: Since the early 1990s, incidences of feminicide across Mexico have increased exponentially. According to official reports published by the Mexican government in 2021, an average of 10 women per day are killed by this most egregious form of gender violence, with a further 24,000 deseparecidas still unaccounted for (Lopez, 2022). In the essay that follows, I will analyse the quality ofMexico’s ‘recognition’ offemicide as a human rights violation, beginning with a consideration ofthe role of the State and the nuanced impact of neoliberal free trade agreements, such as the now-defunct NAFTA. I will then move on to discuss the role played by the press and the public in perpetuating negative stereotypes about certain ‘undesireable’ female bodies, as Mexico’s tabloids tarnish the humanity of murdered women and feed the narrative that such “victims were not really victims because they were ‘involved in something’” (Moon and Treviño-Rangel 2020, p. 725). Finally, I will review the efficacy of Mexico’s ostensibly trailblazing femicide legislation, ultimately concluding that despite superficial legislative progress for victims and their families, the ineptitude and corruption of the Mexican judicial system has rendered this landmark legislation impotent, and, indeed, ignorant. Moreover, in accordance with Judith Butler’s assertion that the “epistemological capacity to apprehend a life is partially dependent on that life being produced according to norms that qualify it as a life”, I will argue that until all victims of gender violence are equally regarded as human by the press, the people, the government and the courts, feminicide cannot and will not be meaningfully ‘recognised’ as a human rights violation in Mexico, and indeed, Latin America at large (Butler, 2009, p. 3). |
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